EL OTRO FUEGO by Inés Mendoza

 The idea that the value of a book is measured by its thickness is yet another of the many beliefs of the human being. Frequently, this results in short story authors including works of differing quality in their books in order to reach an imagined minimum of pages. Fortunately, Inés Mendoza (Caracas, 1970), a Venezuelan living in Madrid, is of a different opinion and her first book ‘El Otro Fuego’ (‘The Other Fire’) offers us a carefully selected collection which doesn’t include one single filler story.

Written with a mature and flawless style that reminds us of some of the masters of this genre, these short stories are always wrapped in an unsettling atmosphere of mystery and strangeness that constantly makes us feel that something is about to be revealed. The rich details, the dreamlike touches and the impossibility of foreseeing the twists the plot will take are other characteristics of the author’s style.

Examples of this are the story with the same name as the book in which a lover of fireworks ends up developing a strange suicide fixation. Or ‘Cuento neoplástico’ with such an original approach that the story is narrated by the rivalry between two painters. As Eloy Tizón points out in the prologue, ‘Origami’ is one of the best stories in the collection and starts with an insomniac who goes out to buy cigarettes and vodka at a petro station and ends up entering a strange world.

Among other stories the book also includes ‘'Estación del destierro', featuring a police officer who searches an attic, or ‘Mutación’, about a courier who receives an inheritance from a stranger. The story ‘'Motivos del sábado' also stands out, in which sexual appetites surface between two couples who have just moved to a new neighbourhood. Inés Mendoza’s surprising ability to reflect male thinking goes to show that good literature isn’t limited by gender.